37 weeks - last doctor's visit

well, today we've done it. made it to 37 weeks which is considered full term for twins. It is crazy to look back and say how relatively easy this pregnancy has been. because we did a lot of baby-class hopping, I get emails from 3 classes worth of other twin moms. when people have their babies then they email their birth stories to the whole class. nobody in the overlake class has had their babies yet, but I get emails from the UW classes about once a weekish. the point is, we have been so lucky. I just got an email the other day about a mom whose health went downhill fast - one day she was happy and feeling good, two days later she had an emergency c-section and delivered her twins at about 30 weeks - they were less than 3 lbs each. another lady delivered at 35 weeks and her babies were plenty big (5/6 lbs I think) but they are at different hospitals because one was having so many issues it needed to be in a higher level NICU. (the poor baby's lungs kept collapsing and they thought he might not make it, but he's currently stable). anyways, the point is, we've made it to 37 weeks and I'm feeling okay. and that, I think, is something to be really thankful for. so I am.

the big news from today's appt is that I'm 2.5 cm dilated. so my body is considering this whole labor business. the doc says she won't push an epidural on me until pretty late (ie they need one in place in case something goes funky btwn baby A and baby B's births) but, I'm also allowed to have one as early as I want, although they recommend getting to 3 cm first, otherwise an epidural tends to slow down labor. so already being at 2.5 is nice! I hope that means I can make it well past 3 cm before asking for an epidural, but we'll just see how it goes. I think the most major thing to pray for is that baby B stays head down after Baby A comes out. there's not a lot to do about it now, but about 10% of baby Bs that are head down flop over and become transverse (sideways) once baby A is out. Since my baby B is larger, he needs to stay head down so the head can press on my cervix and get me to dilate even more. if he tries to stick an arm/leg/cord/anything-else out first, that could mean a c-section, which would be super lousy after delivering baby A vaginally. they won't want to do a breech extraction for baby B because his head could get stuck and that would be very bad. so... that's the plan! this will all happen very soon!